Posts categorized "Museums"

December 14, 2009

Curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari have announced the list of artists for the 2010 Whitney
Biennial. The 75th edition runs Feb. 25-May 30. Eleven of the 55
artists have appeared in previous biennials. (Watch a video of the
curators reading the list of artists here).

An art-world wall has fallen. The list of the 55 artists
to be included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial was made public this
morning, and 52 percent of those artists are women. Depending on where
you stand, hell has frozen over, or there’s a fissure in the force.
(The 2000 Biennial was made up of 36 percent women; in 2008, it was 40
percent.) When I asked curator Francesco Bonami about the unusually
high percentage of women artists in his show, he said that he and
associate curator, Gary Carrion-Murayari, “didn’t look for women
artists. They were just in front of our eyes. It wasn’t conscious at
all.” He added that it was “misleading” to think about the upcoming
Biennial “in these terms.”

Perhaps. Still,
the show will include excellent, newer, below-the-radar artists like
performance chaos-creator Aki Sasamoto; Jessica Jackson Hutchins, whose
arrangements of objects and ceramics create contradictory cosmic and
formal storms; Kate Gilmore, who has been known to smash through
Sheetrock walls while wearing party dresses and high heels; and Sharon
Hayes, whose 2008 performance of her reading an imaginary letter about
love and war on a midtown corner at lunch hour was one of the most
moving things I saw that year. Also on hand will be powerful
under-knowns Babette Mangolte, Dawn Clements, Suzan Frecon, and
Lorraine O’Grady, who has invaded art openings dressed in various
guises, addressing issues of race and class.

The inclusion of all the women artists in this cattle call does not
mean that the upcoming Biennial will be much better or worse than
usual. Art exhibitions should never be about quotas. Still, in all
likelihood, Bonami’s 2010 Biennial will prove once and for all that
women artists are no better and no worse than their male counterparts.
Once this is acknowledged, we’ll be able to get on with the
business-as-usual of tearing the Whitney Biennial to shreds. Or not.

According to Carol Vogel in the NY Times,
the 2010 edition of the Whitney Biennial will not only try to chronicle
current goings-on in contemporary art, but it will also reflect the
world at large. "In these recessionary times, the show will be smaller
than it has been in recent years, with just 55 artists, down from 81 in
2008 and 100 in 2006. It will also be contained in the Whitney Museum
of American Art’s home, the Marcel Breuer building, rather than
spilling over into a second location, as the 2008 Biennial did when it
occupied much of the Park Avenue Armory or into Central Park as other
Biennials have.

"Next year’s event, which runs from Feb. 25 through May 30, is being
organized by Francesco Bonami, 54, the Italian-born curator who helped
put together the Rudolph Stingel retrospective at the Whitney in 2007,
and Gary Carrion-Murayari, 29, a senior curatorial assistant at the
museum who helped with the Biennials in 2004 and 2006."

We invited artist Katie Holten to write about her current project, Tree Museum, a public artwork in the Bronx, New York. — Ed.

I think it’s fair to say that Tree Museum
is unlike most other recent public art projects in New York City. The
scale of the project is huge and at ten miles in length, rivals that of
recent blockbusters such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates(Central Park, 2005), Olafur Eliasson’s The New York City Waterfalls (NYC waterfronts, produced by the Public Art Fund, 2008) and PLOT: This World and Nearer Ones (Governor’s Island, produced by CREATIVE TIME, 2009). But the comparison ends there. In all other regards, the Tree Museum is a different species.

Almost invisible, the Tree Museum, which quietly opened on the Grand Concourse
in the Bronx in June, makes the hidden elements of the street visible.
At the root of my practice is an understanding that nature is not
somewhere else. Nature is not far away on an abandoned island or in a
prairie; it is everything around us, including the unforgiving city
streets and the inherently urban communities of the South Bronx. These
very streets are natural and this environment – our sidewalk, our
block, our apartment building, and of course our street tree — is our place in the city.

The Tree Museum invites pedestrians to experience the Bronx,
and New York City, in unexpected ways. One hundred street trees, from
138th Street at the southern tip of the Grand Concourse to Mosholu
Parkway at the northern tip, are the points of entry to this
“museum-without-walls.” The audio guide at the core of the Tree Museum
links the natural and social ecosystems. The recorded voices and
stories are used sculpturally to create an artwork whose roots reach
down into the history of the place, while the branches spread out and
offer insights into the resilient communities, fragile ecologies, and
vibrant daily scenes to be found along the street...

In a Vulture post about the New Museum's questionable curatorial practices, Saltz assesses
the quality of the vociferous debate and courageously suggests that
prickly blogger Tyler Green's criticism has crossed the line. "One of
the main things that suggested all this indignation had gone too far
was the witch-hunt tone of an editorial in the November issue of Art Newspaper.
The language in the piece — written by art blogger Tyler Green and
published at the end of last week — was scolding, scornful,
condescending, and smug, tinged with a verbal violence that was a
little scary. The editorial begins with the false charge that private
collector exhibitions are 'fluff shows.' Green sniffs that he’s
'especially disappointed' in the New Museum, and finishes by beseeching
all museums to 'cancel' exhibitions of private collections. He demands
that the Association of Art Museum Directors “ban” these shows because
they are 'an insult' to the art world. When I hear a word like 'ban,' I
reach for my dictionary and review the definition of the word democracy.

"This kind of apparatchik rule-making feels off to me. Green has gotten
into the habit of demanding that people be fired, reprimanded, or
punished, as if only he knows right from wrong. He played a role in
getting Grace Glueck fired from the Times for her 'conflict of interest.' After Village Voice
art critic Christian Viveros-Faune talked about his dual roles as a
critic and an employee of an art fair, Green accused him of indulging
'a textbook case of unethical conflict-of-interest' that struck 'at the
very heart of ... integrity' and 'flouted journalistic norms.' Green
sneered that he was 'troubled' by this behavior and publicly asked the
Voice to 'stop publishing' Viveros-Faune. Guess what? That’s exactly
what happened. The Voice and the art world lost a tremendous voice....

"I know it’s dangerous to take on bloggers. They can go after you every
day, all day long, and anonymous people can chime in, too. Already this
week Green has branded me an 'up-with-art cheerleader,' chortled
'balderdash' at something I wrote, and is now even writing comments on
my Facebook page and publishing other of my Facebook comments on his
public blog. Still, come what may, I’m tired of the hate fest."

In a conciliatory response, Green writes in the Comments thread (and on
Saltz's Facebook wall): "I'm proud of the positions I've taken on a
range of issues. It is true that I've taken assertive, principled
positions on a range of issues. I'd be happy to engage in a dialogue on
any of those positions. ...I don't hate you."

Update: On Jerry's Facebook page, Green says the debate isn't about him, it's about the New Museum. Nice guy Ed Winkleman has called for a public debate between Saltz and Green.

"To the museum’s credit, the sensibility of openness that leads to the
collection concept works on both sides of the site database – content
is added and edited using a distributed, wiki-style content management
system (CMS) unique to Linked by Air,
the design firm responsible for the new Whitney site. [...That ] part
of the goal of the new site [... is to allow] a broad range of
museum employees to contribute directly to it assures currency,
accuracy – and staff ownership."

I don’t envy those who have to redesign the website for a museum –
balancing institutional structure and needs with the requirement that
it reflect the appropriate aesthetic. Moreover, the process of
transitioning a sensibility to the web in itself requires decisions
about what the organization represents – a staid, classical collection
would justifiably be nervous about embracing an open engagement of the
general public.

The Metropolitan Museum, for example, probably won’t be holding a contest on YouTube any time soon. Its website,
which looks like it was created by a medium sized corporation in 2002,
is staid, muted, and tucked behind a splash screen. The Museum of Modern Art’s website,
by contrast, is, well, modern, with a palette and structure that would
bore Mies van der Rohe. It’s the Obama of websites – so cool, it’s dull.

Late last night, the Whitney Museum of American Art, known for its modern and contemporary exhibitions and its Biennial,
unveiled the latest example from this world. It’s a great improvement
over what was there yesterday, though that’s a low hurdle to conquer.
Yesterday, the site was a card catalog. Today, it’s a website.

What establishes the Whitney’s new site as a success is not the
aesthetic revamping with which, frankly, I’m not impressed. Various
elements are laid in a casual grid, anchored by the logo, nice and big,
at the top. The navigation is awkward, with elements jumping to the
head of the line to show additional options once clicked. The
background is either black or white, in order to accommodate a
conceptually interesting feature in which it changes when the sun in
New York rises or sets. (That would be at 4:41 this afternoon or 6:40
tomorrow morning for those wanting to witness it.) As I said –
conceptually interesting. In practice, though, it tends to make the
site feel a bit flat, and perusing the collection is negatively
impacted by the black background. (White borders would do wonders.)

That’s particularly a shame, because said perusal and its
accompanying tools are the real hook to the site. The collection itself
is easy to navigate and well indexed. Every page, one notices, has at
the bottom a small dot which, when clicked, adds an item to your
“custom collection” (assuming you take advantage of the free
registration, which you ought to do). This is not unique – the
afore-mentioned MoMA site has a similar function – but the Whitney
takes it further. When, above, I said every page, I meant every
page. In addition to works of art, you can add artists, site elements,
upcoming exhibits, even the contact page. Collections are an
opportunity to interact with more than the art – you can in essence
create your own museum website.

November 04, 2009

New
York-based artist William Powhida, who frequently satirizes art world
figures and conventions in his art, has taken on the New Museum's
"suicide" in his latest work.

Excerpted above, Powhida's
drawing details "How the New Museum Committed Suicide with Banality,"
and includes James Wagner, Lisa Phillips, Marcia Tucker, Jeff Koons,
and plenty of others who are somehow engaged in the NuMu's self-injury.
You can see the drawing here at Powhida's website (click on it for a high-res image). New Yorkers will see it on the cover of the next Brooklyn Rail.